Social search technologiesin health and medicine

Dean Giustini, UBC librarian | dean.giustini@ubc.ca | SPPH 581H, October 2011

Image courtesy of Lone Wolf Librarian

Week V – Search technologies in public health

Readings

• Hughes B et al. Junior physician’s use of Web 2.0 for information seeking and medical education: A qualitative study. Int J Med Inf 2009; 78:645-655.

• Metzger MJ. Using web 2.0 technologies to enhance evidence-based medical information. J Health Communication. 2011; 16 (sup1).

• Tang et al. Googling for a diagnosis-use of Google as a diagnostic aid: internet based study. BMJ 2006;1143-1145.

Websites

Google scholar – http://scholar.google.com

PubMed Health – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/

Twitter search – http://search.twitter.com

Search technologies – linked to being informed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs

Google search described in 3 minutes

What is a search engine? An index?

• A tool to help locate information within a database

• Within corporate, proprietary networks or PCs

• Search using specific criteria, items that match

• Search an “index” to find material quickly

• A ‘bot’ indexes webpages as it ‘crawls’ links

A search engine is a program for the retrieval of data, files or documents from a database or network,

esp. the Internet

Basic search engine tips & tricks

• For phrase searching, use quotes• “Asperger’s Syndrome”

• Targeted searching at a specific site • Example….bullying site:kidshealth.org

• Not case sensitive• Will spell check• Can use Boolean searching ( OR, NOT )• With +, can limit search term to exactly what you• With *, can search for variations of a word

• Word frequency method • relevance based on # of times word is repeated• increase relevance by using keywords in ‘meta’ tags on web page

• Google’s PageRank method• Based on mathematical algorithm• Incoming links are treated as “votes” • Popularity over quality• Many links on the web are invalid due to spam

How advanced are you at googling?

Health Search

Reference Tools

Search technologies on the web

• Social indexing of information we share on the web

• Computational formulas are not guiding results

• Listing search results by relevance is based on trust

• Users of such a social search engine are automatically secured from spamming and phishing sites

What is a social search engine?

“We've gotten so inundated with junk; it's hard to find the information you want …”

What's taking its place? Social-based search ... people are turning to Facebook, Twitter & social platforms …

Instead of searching Google for restaurants in Toronto, they'll ask their social networks for a recommendation …”

What is a social search engine?

Source: “Social search supplanted indexed search in 2011: Info-Tech”

• Uses social networking information to filter your search results

• Mines your ‘metadata’ to judge web page relevance

• Metadata is defined as ‘data about data’

• Metadata refers to feedback from groups about web pages

A social search engine …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYf5iSA6t6g&feature=relmfu

Google social search? YouTube explains

Google Flu Trends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6111nS66Dpk

… social search takes into account the social graph of the person initiating the search …when applied to web searching this approach to relevance

stands in contrast to established algorithmic or machine-based approaches where relevance is determined by analyzing the text of each

document or link structure of documents … results produced by social search engines give more visibility to content created or touched by users

…

… social data ranges from simple shared bookmarks or tagging of content with descriptive labels to more sophisticated approaches that combine

human intelligence with computer algorithms

And, Wikipedia says …

…the use of information from people we trust ...experts including academics, researchers, scientists ... our friends and family….these opinions and recommendations can be

collected (and mined) making the data very powerful… metadata (data about other data) provides collaborative

filtering capabilities & information sorting

Put simply, social search is…

1. Blekko – sorting out what your friends like or think are important

2. Google social circle – list your social circle of friends

3. Mahalo – see human-recommended web sites

4. Scour – vote for your favourite sites

5. SideStripe – you have questions, friends have answers

6. Social mention – real-time social media search & analysis

7. Social search – find websites your friends like

Social search engines 2011

Social future of findability?

+Social network &

social dataExisting search engines

on the web

Social search engines

Who?

AcademicsLibrariansNursesPhysiciansStudents

What?

AmazonBingFacebookGoogleWikipediaYahoo

Sum total of evidence of in public health“Evidence-based public health 2.0”?

social network - set of socially-relevant nodes connected by one or more relationships

social network analysis - nodes and ties (also edges, links, or connections) convey relationships….nodes are individual actors in a network, and ties are the relationships between them. The resulting graph is complex with many ties between nodes. Research shows that social networks operate on many levels from families up to the level of nations, and play a role in determining how problems are solved, organizations are run and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals

sociograms - is a graphic representation of social links that someone enjoys in their relationships online and offline. A sociogram, in other words, is a diagram of the structure and patterns of group interactions. A sociogram can be drawn on the basis of different criteria: social relations, channels of influence, lines of communication etc.

“Seeing” social networks

social capital - refers to the social networks, systems of reciprocal relations, sets of norms or levels of trust individuals and groups have (or resources arising from them)

Betweenness - connectivity of “kin” or nodes; reflects # of people to whom you are connected

homophily - (i.e., "love of the same") is a tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others; its presence is revealed in several network studies node - a node in a network can be tied to another node; a group of nodes are members in a social network. Nodes to which an individual connects are social contacts of that individual

Linkage in social networks

http://hlwiki.slais.ubc.ca/index.php/Social_network_analysis